Home Page - 2002-03-17

Like many of you, I'm forever intrigued by the goal of creating software, which is
on-time and within budget. Even while saying these words I realize the ridiculous
impossibility of this task. But I'm desperate enough to try finding some sense in
it, as I realize that I'm almost immobilized without it. What is the use of the
standards like SEI-CMM, ISO etc. in measuring a company's stature?...

How can
the Employer be sure that their wards will not return back in the last hour saying
that they have not understood the assignment? How can programmers be sure that their
managers will not victimize for not doing something which they have not been asked
for? What is the difference between the role of an application architect and a project
manager?...

...I fully well recognize the forces of the need-of-an-hour, that is
why I don't want infallible laws, since there isn't any (any law is fallible),
but only strong invariants that are worth pondering. My current theories could be
completely wrong, but whatever emerges newly, should be hastened by this current
one. I think, this is the force that drives us all in finding some non-insane
calm ways to go about this enigma called Software Development.

A device is a nice simile for a JMX enabled resource. Of course even an application
could be one (JBoss is the foremost example). A managed resource is provided an
interface by JMX. All resources to be managed are abstracted as Attributes
(indicators? maybe a modifiable indicator), Operations (Controls), Notifications
(output signals), and some Descriptors. Also Constructors.

In a sense, JMX is just a glorified and abstracted Reflection. Where Attributes are
like Variables, Operations are like Methods/Procedures, Notifications are like Events,
and Descriptors are just Name-Value pairs. The resource that is willing to be
managed, exposes a set of Attributes, Operations and Notifications, to a central
server, and thus being transparent to the managing applications, otherwise.

TATTVUM-Announce@yahoogroups.com
This is a newsletter group, your replies will go direct to the owner. We intend to
keep this a very low traffic group, for occasional important notifications to the
community.

TATTVUM-Discuss@yahoogroups.com
This is a traditional group, for discussion between members. This could be bit heavy in
traffic. If you would like to shape TATTVUM's future, please join this group and
participate with your valuable inputs.

TATTVUM-Feedback@yahoogroups.com
Anybody can post to this group, even non-members. So, if you would like to
comment or contribute articles, but do not wish to be a member of a more
serious forum like TATTVUM-Discuss, please do feel free to drop in your
criticism and suggestion to this email id. Article Contributers could lurk
here to get the feedback for their articles, first hand.

Few of our friends inquired what TATTVUM means. We are happy to share it with you
all. TATTVUM is one of those Vedic Sanskrit words that have been adopted into Tamil
with minor syntactic abridgment and different but equally respectful connotation.
In Sanskrit its full form is TAT TVUM ASI, which translates to That You
are. This sentence is very respected and famous in Vedic literature, and is
in fact one of the five famous such phrases, and succinct of all. This assertion
has been interpreted into various meanings. While starting the company, we were
encouraged by the fatalistic but very optimistic philosophy of Advita, and
hence the name. In Tamil it means A deep thought.

The Articles: What is it for?

Few of our well-wishing reviewers have suggested that we should focus more on
'What' and 'How' of the topics that we post here. Very valid suggestion indeed.
Unfortunately, that takes too much work from us for it to be useful to others,
without being a carbon copy of other sources in the web. We feel that the web is
the ultimate medium of reusability, and we do not want to do injustice to those
great links that we use as references, by recasting it literally. There are many
authors who have done pioneering work in the topics we choose to comment upon. We
can neither match their clarity nor their pioneering study, without copying their
content greatly. This is indecent copyright violation, and pointless. Of course,
if we can, or if you could and are willing, this site would definitely be a patron
of such original and lucid articles.

Our unique intention and strength lies in putting all these modern modularity
concepts into an unified proven whole. These articles are steps in that direction.
We believe, before standardizing on something, we should survey the existing
understanding and then concretize on the best. These articles, as far as possible,
try to emphasize the 'Why' angle of the concepts. Of course, we do try to give a
brief summary in concise terms, and also the list of web links that we have
enjoyed and have been greatly benefited by.

We hope the discerning readers would understand and appreciate this way of thinking,
and we intend to mature in that direction. We are not at all worried, if after
trying our site people flock to other worthy sites. We are in fact happy about that.
Our intention is to motivate more original thinking. All said, we do understand,
that drabness of language, content and form, is never acceptable and we will
be grateful to your suggestions in that direction. Wishing a long and profitable
association.